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Description:

The 7510A was HP's only attempt at the film recorder market. The 7510A was manufactured by the Colorado Springs Division and marketed by the San Diego Division (because it was an HP-GL device).

HP had been highly successful in color hardcopy with its pen plotters. HP hoped to gain entry into the market by introducing a high-resolution vector-based (HP-GL) film recorder. The 7510 failed because it was too expensive relative to the competition.

The 7510A also had a major technical problem related to “light additivity”. The 7510 created images on photographic film by drawing colored lines (vectors) on the film. A white spot resulted when these colored lines overlapped. This had not been a problem with the vector pen plotters because ink color overlap produces a different (and much less noticeable) result than light color overlap.

The 7510A was obsoleted in November of 1987.

These devices are extremely rare; less than a few hundred were manufactured.

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